Culture

Watch Kyle MacLachlan Make a 'Twin Peaks' Bento Box

July 18, 2017

Earlier this week, Kyle MacLachlan stopped by the Los Angeles offices of WOWOW, the channel that airs Twin Peaks: The Return in Japan, to craft a bento box modeled after the show. It’s resulted in a video, produced by Delish Kitchen, that clocks in at just under a minute.

The video begins with MacLachlan grilling hamburger meat and resting it atop a bed of cerise radicchio, crowning it with a slice of cheese that looks like a coffee cup. That forms one half of the box; the bottom’s composed of rice decorated with nori, tiled like the chevron carvings of a cherry pie.

MacLachlan shifts fluidly between English and Japanese (he’s got a stellar command of Japanese for an American, to my ear). “Very unique,” MacLachlan says at the video’s end, half-jokingly, tongue firmly in cheek. “Just like Twin Peaks.”

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This clip isn’t a patch on those bizarro Georgia-brand canned coffee commercials that MacLachlan and his costars so gamely participated in and were broadcast in Japan in 1992, the result of the show's rabid and unceasing fanbase in the country. In my book, at least. But it's a tough act to follow.

No matter: I continue to be fascinated by the way food functions within this show's wayward, enchantingly erratic plot line. I spoke to MacLachlan earlier this year, just ahead of the new show's premiere, about the show's treatment of food, and how the various meals in Twin Peaks function as places of comfort against the narrative's disquieting tonal shifts. And though I love to see MacLachlan make a cherry pie, I’m sure glad to see him cook something else for a change.

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Mayukh Sen is a James Beard Award-winning food and culture writer in New York. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, the New Yorker, Bon Appetit, and elsewhere. He won a 2018 James Beard Award in Journalism for his profile of Princess Pamela published on Food52.

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